Chili con Pollo, of course, is chili made with chicken instead of beef. I love chili on a cold day! But, the chili con carne that I used to make contains lots of ground beef, which I limit because I am trying to follow the MIND diet. I have tried making it with ground turkey with mediocre results. Today, I tried it with ground chicken and it was oh-so-good!
I think one reason why it was so good was because of the olive oil that I browned the chicken in. I have been trying to use more olive oil in my diet. I had formerly been avoiding oil of any kind as much as possible, because of it calorie contribution. But, now I am reading about the benefits of eating olive oil, so I am trying to work a little more in. So, I started my chili by browning the ground chicken in olive oil. I don’t know if that is what made it taste so much better, but I am definitely going to try it again.
Chili con Pollo 4 servings
- 1 lb ground chicken
- 1 TBSP olive oil
- *4 cups “canned tomatoes,” blended to liquefy
- 1 15 oz. can pinto beans
- 1 TBSP chili powder
- 1 TBSP garlic powder
- ½ TBSP cumin
- ½ TBSP salt
Brown the chicken in 1 T olive oil and crumble. This means to cook it so it is really brown, not just cooked. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until the chili is as thick as you like it. I simmered my test recipe a couple of hours.
Myfitnesspal.com says one serving is 319 calories.
Of course, you are welcome to adjust the spices to your heat tolerance and add anything you like. Onion and pepper would probably be good. I think I will try using about half the chicken next time. This recipe comes out to 4 ounces of chicken per serving plus a whole serving of beans. I don’t really need that much protein, especially when eating it for lunch.
*”canned tomatoes” is not exactly what I used. I grow a few tomato plants each summer and, when they are being quite prolific, I freeze some. I just wash and cut out stems and any bad spots and throw then in a zip lock bag and put them in the freezer. When I am ready to use them, I run them under warm water for a few seconds and the skins come right off – not really peeling because no knife is involved, they just “slough off.” More about freezing tomatoes.
When I use my frozen tomatoes in chili, I cut them in quarters and run them through the blender with a little water. Sometimes, I heat them a little first to soften them. For this recipe I used 4 medium tomatoes and about 3 cups water. I think that makes an equivalent to about two 15 oz cans or 1 28 oz can of canned tomatoes. You could probably just put the quarters in the chili and the simmering would soften them up, but my kinds never liked chunks of tomatoes in anything so I always blend them, even when using diced tomatoes from a can.
So, I hope you will try my chili con pollo. It has four of the recommended foods for the MIND diet and none of the “avoid these” foods.
- other vegetable
- poultry
- olive oil
- beans
While there are not really any of the foods to avoid, I do need to make an improvement. You might notice that my photo show some oyster crackers in my chili. I love oyster crackers in chili, but I have not found any whole grain oyster crackers yet, at least locally. I did see some on Amazon, but I would have to buy a couple of years worth. I might have to resort to making my own. That might be my next post.
By the way, I knew that the Spanish word for chicken is ‘pollo’ because I have taken some Spanish in school. However, those classes didn’t prepare me to speak or understand spoken Spanish. I have now started on a quest to be able to speak and understand Spanish. My main reasons for doing this are because I always wanted to and there are an increasing number of Spanish-speaking people in our area. A bonus is that there is some evidence (or perhaps more hypothesizing) that learning a new language may help prevent cognitive decline. This i just one of the articles that describes why this might work. While I am not convinced that there is strong research support for this connection, I am enjoying the process and might find it useful. I am sharing this with you because I am assuming that if you are reading this post, you are interested in preventing cognitive decline.
Hasta la vista